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[Midnight Rider]

Rod's Performance is a guy I've used in the past to tune both my 06 Vrod and my '06 SEUC with the PCIII.  He always did a good job, IMO.  Good enough for me, anyhow.  So, I thought I'd make a run up to his shop (about 50 miles from home) and let him take a look at the map that Fullsac provides, put it up on the Dyno, and see what's going on.  I really had no complaints with the bike...just curious more than anything else.  Rod is a "certified" TTS tuner, and a pretty good guy.  He basically said that the canned map provided by Fullsac for my setup...Fullsac B X Pipe and 2" Fullsac cores...was damned good.  The only thing he suggested was richening things up just a tad in the normal cruising range and just a tweak in the idle A/F area.

Bottom line:  on MY bike, the canned map was as close to perfect as it needed to be.  He richened things up just a bit, and it does seem to have just a bit more "butt dyno" power, but not anything significant.  I'll run his corrections for a couple of tanks and see how much difference it makes to my mpg.  The motor is running a tad cooler, from a subjective point of view, and that's generally a good thing in this part of the country.  If I only lose a couple of mpg, I'll leave things as is.  I can always load the canned map back in if I want to get as many mpg as is practical.

He did a pull on the Dyno:  STD correction factor, Smoothing: 5.  112.42 TQ and 93.53 HP.  About what most others get with this set up.  I didn't bother getting SAE numbers, but if you take off the typical 4%, it would still be in the area of 108/90.  Conditions in the Dyno room he has set up were: 79.46 F, 29.85 in-Hg, and 24% Humidity (it was dry here yesterday) The TQ is above 100 ft lbs from 2500 to right at 3800...right where I ride most of the time.  From my previous experience, and this one too, Rod's Dyno is not one of those "happy dynos"...he tends to give folks honest numbers and not try to skew them higher.

So, I'm perfectly content with the way the bike is running, with either map...now I've just got two good ones to choose from.  Maybe run one in cooler weather and the other when it gets hot down here.  Since it only takes about 15 minutes to load either one, not a big deal.

[ultrafxr]

Sounds good Terry.  Been to Rod's a couple times and impressed with his operation.  That was before TTS when all he did was Power Commander.  Good to know that the Fullsac map was so good.

Jerry

[grc]

Sounds good Terry.  I think the later model bikes with closed loop and tighter emission control calibrations have less bike to bike variation than the older EFI bikes, so "canned" maps tend to be more likely to work on a broader number of bikes these days.

Your comments did remind me of a subject I've thought about many times.  I'm still somewhat irked by the number of places that don't automatically use SAE correction on their charts.  It may be an innocent oversight in many cases, but it still gives me that little fleeting thought in the back of my mind that they might be trying to inflate numbers to prove the superiority of their tuning.  IMHO, SAE should be the default setup in the software.


Jerry

[glens]

The only thing he suggested was richening things up just a tad in the normal cruising range and just a tweak in the idle A/F area.

Did he take it out of closed loop or just closer to the edge?

[Midnight Rider]

Sounds good Terry.  I think the later model bikes with closed loop and tighter emission control calibrations have less bike to bike variation than the older EFI bikes, so "canned" maps tend to be more likely to work on a broader number of bikes these days.

Your comments did remind me of a subject I've thought about many times.  I'm still somewhat irked by the number of places that don't automatically use SAE correction on their charts.  It may be an innocent oversight in many cases, but it still gives me that little fleeting thought in the back of my mind that they might be trying to inflate numbers to prove the superiority of their tuning.  IMHO, SAE should be the default setup in the software.


Jerry

I agree, Jerry.  On both subjects.  The main thing though, is that they use smoothing, so you don't get extremes.  STD is OK, as long as everyone understands what it is and you can bascially subtract 4% from whatever it says.  He had run a 2001 SERG build just prior, so might have had the computer set up that way at the guys request.  No matter though, as I don't feel his dyno numbers are exaggerated, whichever way he does the pull.  They should do SAE:5 though, just to make it a more level playing field.

[Midnight Rider]

Did he take it out of closed loop or just closer to the edge?

From my understanding, he just took it closer to the edge, but I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around this.

For example, is there a lambda value where the bike will never go into closed loop mode (for better fuel economy), regardless?

[glens]

Yes, there's a range of values that will go closed-loop.  Just load the calibration in the software, pick a cell, and decrement the value a unit at a time until the red bars on the sides of the cell go away, which indicates it's out of closed-loop.  If there aren't red bars on the sides of the cells then it's not closed-loop.

On a 103 .mt7 calibration Steve sent me the range is 0.977 to 1.012, inclusive, for closed-loop operation.  Same as on the .mt8 calibration I'm using in the bike.

To what did he set your "cruise" areas?

[Midnight Rider]

Just as I suspected, he set most of them to .940.  Runs good, but that's 13.8 A/F over most of the range of cruise.  Obviously, not in closed loop, if I half-assed understand this stuff. 

I'm just starting to get my head wrapped around this...been reading a lot of late.  I can do a lot of things to the bike, but I have not really been studying all the stuff the TTS can do, other than what I needed to know.  Obviously, I need to learn more.

Steve sent me a MT8 file...the latest one.  I'll load it and see how it does.  The "old" map was a MT7 file...similar in configuration, but not quite the same.  Looks like the newer MT8 file has been richened up for "parade duty", under 1750 RPM   but, everywhere else, it's .979-.984  Until WOT, of course, then it's .885, or 13:1.

Fortunately, Rod did not charge me for anything more than a pull.

[glens]

That's what I suspected.  From 14.4 to 13.8 is going to "spend" about 4% more fuel.

The major benefit of closed-loop on our bikes is that it will adjust the calibration to match varying fuels, varying (various) sensor operation, fuel pump and/or pressure regulator anomalies, and injector variations over time.  If we had the tools to alter where the closed-loop "adaptive fuel values" are located and how they're utilized we could broaden the open-loop areas and maintain the overall benefits of "self tuning", but we don't and therefore can't, so going open-loop in areas where the calibration was originally (from TTS) closed-loop can "strand" those areas and isolate them from any self-correction.  Not a good idea in my book.

While you're wrapping your noodle around it, try to get used to using just the lambda figures.  "14.6" isn't 14.6 just about anywhere you're going to pump gas into the bike's tank (more likely ~14.2 or so, with any other "AFR" numbers in the software being "lies" to the same proportion) but the lambda figures are always "true" no matter the fuel.  The dyno's "AFR" reports are off the same.  The O2 sensors, all of them, are lambda probes and that's what they report.  Any display that's fed by them and reports AFR without intimate knowledge from the ECM (probably more intimate than ours can even go anyway) is showing values "normalized" to a fuel that's pretty much unavailable anymore.

[Midnight Rider]

From my reading/research, all that you say is true.

I have a pretty good background in PLC controllers, industrial grade sensors, etc...used to do calibration and "module" programming to large HVAC systems, so understand the concepts, just not all the specifics.  I contacted Steve at Fullsac via e-mail and he sent me the "latest and greatest" MT8 file for the 110 CVO with 2" cores.  It is slightly different than the MT7 file I was running prior to my visit at Rods, so now I have the original ECM file, the MT7 file (which ran fine), the modified MT7 open loop file (which also runs fine), and the new MT8 file.  I loaded the MT8 file today and took a little spin of about 30 miles (it's in the low 60's here today) through some twisties, then a run on the Interstate up to 110mph + (for a few seconds).  The new file seems to be better than the original MT7 file I was running...a bit more pull at WOT.  The bike runs perfect with the canned map Steve sent.  I must be lucky...my bike has run fine on the canned maps...no popping on decel, great throttle response, smooth idle, and pulls hard at WOT through all the gears.  I backed off when I shifted into 6th today at 110mph.  A side benefit today is I got my speedometer calibrated to perfectly match the GPS reading.   

I carry my laptop with me on trips anyhow, so will just throw the TTS box and cables in with it, in case there's trouble on the road and I have to take it to a dealer for warranty work.  15 minutes in a parking lot and the bike will be back to stock so HD can't say anything about changing stuff, giving them an excuse to screw around with warranty things.  Hopefully, that'll never be necessary.